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Large carnivores are essential components of natural ecosystems. In populated areas, their conservation depends on preserving a favorable status in coexistence with humans, which may require the elimination of excess carnivores to minimize public concerns. As the Baltic region currently hosts a thriving wolf population, locally sustainable management of wolves is important for preserving biodiversity at a European scale. In this paper, we provide a dynamic assessment of the Latvian wolf subpopulation from 1998 until 2020. This study is based on age composition and fecundity data from teeth, uteri, and ovaria inspections obtained from samples of legally culled or accidentally killed individuals. The abundance estimates indicated population growth that exceeded the previously predicted carrying capacity. The proportion of juveniles among the culled individuals increased in recent years, but the mean age of culled adults exhibited a stable trend. In presumably nonselective hunting, the juveniles and individuals older than 3 years had greater culling mortality estimates in comparison with other age classes, and the culling rates for adult females of particular age classes were higher than for males of the same age. While creating significant hunting pressure, wolf management in Latvia may have contributed to the population growth by affecting its demographic processes.

The recovery of wolves ( Canis lupus ) across Europe is a notable conservation success in a region with extensive human alteration of landscapes and high human population densities. We provide a comprehensive update on wolf populations in Europe, estimated at over 21,500 individuals by 2022, representing a 58% increase over the past decade. Despite the challenges of high human densities and significant land use for agriculture, industry, and urbanization, wolves have demonstrated remarkable adaptability and increasing population trends in most European countries. Improved monitoring techniques, although varying in quality and scope, have played a crucial role in tracking this recovery. Annually, wolves kill approximately 56,000 domestic animals in the EU, a risk unevenly distributed and differently handled across regions. Damage compensation costs 17 million EUR every year to European countries. Positive economic impacts from wolf presence, such as those related to reducing traffic accidents with wild ungulates or supporting wildlife tourism, remain under studied. Wolf recovery in Europe is supported by diverse policy and legal instruments such as LIFE programs, stakeholder platforms, as well as the EU Habitats Directive and the Bern Convention. Coexisting with newly established wolf populations in Europe entails managing impacts on human activities, including livestock depredation, competition for game, and fear of attacks on humans, amidst varying social and political views on wolf recovery. Sustainable coexistence continues to operate in evolving and complex social, economic, and political landscapes, often characterized by intense debates regarding wolf policies.

The ecology and evolution of reproductive timing and synchrony have been a topic of great interest in evolutionary ecology for decades. Originally motivated by questions related to behavioral and reproductive adaptation to environmental conditions, the topic has acquired new relevance in the face of climate change. However, there has been relatively little research on reproductive phenology in mammalian carnivores. The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) occurs across the Eurasian continent, covering three of the four main climate regions of the world. Thus, their distribution includes a large variation in climatic conditions, making it an ideal species to explore reproductive phenology. Here, we used data on multiple reproductive events from 169 lynx females across Europe. Mean birth date was May 28 (April 23 to July 1), but was ~10 days later in northern Europe than in central and southern Europe. Birth dates were relatively synchronized across Europe, but more so in the north than in the south. Timing of birth was delayed by colder May temperatures. Severe and cold weather may affect neonatal survival via hypothermia and avoiding inclement weather early in the season may select against early births, especially at northern latitudes. Overall, only about half of the kittens born survived until onset of winter but whether kittens were born relatively late or early did not affect kitten survival. Lynx are strict seasonal breeders but still show a degree of flexibility to adapt the timing of birth to surrounding environmental conditions. We argue that lynx give birth later when exposed to colder spring temperatures and have more synchronized births when the window of favorable conditions for raising kittens is shorter. This suggests that lynx are well adapted to different environmental conditions, from dry and warm climates to alpine, boreal, and arctic climates. This variation in reproductive timing will be favorable in times of climate change, as organisms with high plasticity are more likely to adjust to new environmental conditions. carnivore, demography, Lynx lynx, reproductive phenology

A survey was carried out to determine the attitudes of the general public and of hunters towards wolves (Canis lupus) in Latvia. Today wildlife conservation depends on effective management practices; however, these are often influenced by public opinions and attitudes. Our aim was to understand the causes behind these attitudes and to compare our results with previous research done in Latvia. Questionnaires were distributed through schools and hunter organisations. The attitudes of both the general public and hunters were mostly neutral or positive. Older people and women were generally less positive. Respondents with less positive attitudes were more likely to say that wolf numbers in the country should be decreased. Significant associations between attitudes, beliefs of wolves causing damage and financial losses and what should be done with wolf numbers in Latvia were found. Three attitude predictors were established.

Articles immediately started pouring in; within weeks, the journal’s contributions had been recognized by institutions such as the World Health Organization, the US National Library of Medicine’s Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, and UNESCO (see Jandrić 2021 for details). [...]I am happy to report that 'Teaching in the Age of Covid-19—1 Year Later' has almost 92% of the original contributors, which is a number large enough for a meaningful comparative analysis. Taken together, these articles offer an in-depth textual and visual insight into individual changes and adjustments made by global teachers and learners as the Covid-19 pandemic has progressed from a once-in-a-lifetime disruptive event into a new normal. [...]as academics, teachers, and public intellectuals, we have a responsibility to actively contribute to development of the so-called new normal, and this material provides important insight into the temporal development of the pandemic responses.

This is the first volume on the studies of queer identities in Europe to adopt a strong focus on the history of the Baltic region among other countries in Central and East Europe. It unites work by researchers of different European countries that deals with various representations of the queer culture over a period of more than one hundred years. A significant part of the book is dedicated to belletristics, with the contributors offering readings of it with knowledge about ideas circulating in public discourse that have been influential for new discoveries in history, art history, culture studies, communication studies, theology, and narratology, among other fields.

Dispersal is a key process for the maintenance of intraspecific genetic diversity by ensuring gene flow within and between populations. Despite the ongoing expansion of large carnivores in Europe, lynx populations remain fragmented, isolated, and threatened by inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity. In the course of large carnivore monitoring in the Czech Republic, several biological samples of Eurasian lynx were collected outside the permanent occurrence of this species. Using microsatellite genotyping we identified these as four dispersing lynx males and applied multiple methods (Bayesian clustering in STRUCTURE, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), frequency-based method in GENECLASS2, and machine-learning framework in assignPOP) to assign them to possible source populations. For this we used genotypes from five European lynx populations: the Bohemian-Bavarian-Austrian (N = 36), Carpathian (N = 43), Scandinavian (N = 20), Baltic (N = 15), and Harz (N = 23) population. All four dispersers were successfully assigned to different source populations within Europe and each was recorded at a distance of more than 98 km from the edge of the distribution of the source population identified. Such movements are among the longest described for lynx in Central Europe to this point. The findings indicate the ability of lynx males to disperse in human-dominated landscape thus facilitation of these movements via creation and/or protection of potential migratory corridors together with protection of dispersing individuals should be of high importance in conservation of this iconic predator in Central Europe.

Nowadays, genetic research methods play an important role in animal population studies. Since 2009, genetic material from Latvian wolf specimens obtained through hunting has been systematically gathered. This study, spanning until 2021, scrutinizes the consequences of regulated wolf hunting on population genetic metrics, kinship dynamics, and social organization. We employed 16 autosomal microsatellites to investigate relationships between full siblings and parent–offspring pairs. Our analysis encompassed expected and observed heterozygosity, inbreeding coefficients, allelic diversity, genetic distance and differentiation, mean pairwise relatedness, and the number of migrants per generation. The Latvian wolf population demonstrated robust genetic diversity with minimal inbreeding, maintaining stable allelic diversity and high heterozygosity over time and it is not fragmented. Our findings reveal the persistence of conventional wolf pack structures and enduring kinship groups. However, the study also underscores the adverse effects of intensified hunting pressure, leading to breeder loss, pack disruption, territorial displacement, and the premature dispersal of juvenile wolves.

Dairy sector is an essential part of Baltic States economies in terms of created gross value added (GVA) and labour usage. The dairy sector’s potential to create economic effect is underutilised as a result of fragmented production structure and ensuing low economic efficiency. Integration can facilitate concentration of the sector’s market structure. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of dairy sector secondary-level company integration on the creation of GVA. To accomplish the aim, an extensive sample of 54 companies is used whereas previous research has been based on data of only 5-10 largest Baltic States companies. It is concluded that integration characteristics of dairy processing companies significantly influence relationships which express their GVA creation pattern. Dominating horizontally integrated dairy processing companies are the most valuable to the economy as their GVA increase rate which results from net turnover growth is the highest. Non-integrated companies’ GVA growth rate provided that their net turnover grows is lower than for dominating horizontally integrated companies. Increases in company size do not statistically significantly increase the relation of GVA to the sum of net turnover and other operating income. Both successful and commercially weak companies can produce high GVA in respect to their size. However, only the successful companies are expected to generate positive growth dynamics, be economically efficient and can be relied upon as driving force of dairy sector growth.

Intensive forest management has promoted an increase in deer (Cervidae) population density. Various silvicultural activities, such as pre-commercial thinning, can change the feeding conditions for deer species, therefore impacting browsing pressure on target tree species. In this study, we analyzed how several factors, including the density of the main tree species, admixture, undergrowth, and forest type, affect deer damage intensity in pine stands, considering deer densities and regional aspects in hemiboreal Latvia. GLMM analysis, based on data from 1238 sample plots, showed that the probability of browsing damage decreases with an increase in the density of undergrowth in young (<20 years) pine stands with a dominant height below 3 m. Also, the probability of pines being damaged by deer was significantly (p = 0.001) higher in stands with fresh pre-commercial thinning than in those with no thinning. However, differences in deer density between regions also determined browsing pressure. Results indicated that undergrowth density, pre-commercial thinning, and deer density may be important drivers of damage levels, especially in the winter browsing of young pine stands on wet mineral soils. Therefore, future research should continue to evaluate applied forest management strategies in hemiboreal forests that provide additional natural food base in the form of woody plants and shrubs in winter forage to ensure more deer-adapted practices.